Chapter 11: The First Steps of Survival
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I slowly exhaled, watching my breath turn to steam in the frozen air.
Building a shelter sounded rather easy in my head.
Find wood. Stack it. Done.
Reality, however, was cruel.
I stood in the forest, looking at the towering pine trees surrounding me. Their dark green needles swayed in the wind. Snow covered the ground, making everything feel still—untouched.
This would be my first real test.
Taking a breath again, I gripped my knife tightly and moved towards the closest tree.
The bark was rough beneath my fingertips, covered in small patches of frost and snow. I ran my hand across it, searching for a spot to pierce the bark.
I needed logs thick enough to hold some weight, but light enough for me to carry back to camp.
With my knife, I began cutting into the bark, testing its resistance and toughness. My arms strained as I cut deeper, my fingers already getting numb from the cold.
I clenched my jaw.
This is going to take an eternity.
I had no axe. No saw. Just a small knife and my hands. Those weren't good conditions.
With every push of the blade, I could feel the strain in my fingers and wrists. After minutes of effort, I had only managed to strip off a small piece of bark. The wood underneath was solid.
Frustration emerged in my chest, but I forced myself to stay calm.
If I can't cut a tree down easily, I'll have to improvise.
I moved deeper into the forest, searching for fallen branches or trees that had already snapped.
After a few minutes of searching, I found something promising—a tree that had fallen at an angle, half-broken but still supported by others.
Its trunk was not too thick to carry and not too heavy to lift.
I ran my hands over the wood. It was cold, solid, but had cracks running along its surface. A good sign—it meant I could break it apart without too much effort.
I positioned myself, gripping a sturdy branch that extended from the fallen tree. Taking a deep breath, I pulled.
The wood made sounds of cracking under the pressure.
I pulled harder, putting my entire weight into it.
Crack.
The sound was sharp in the quiet forest.
I stumbled back, losing my balance as the branch snapped free.
I panted, looking down at the piece in my hands. About as thick as my arm, but long enough to be useful.
One down.
And a hundred more to go.
I spent the next two hours repeating the process.
My arms ached. My legs burned from crouching and pulling. My fingers felt raw from the cold and the rough wood.
By the time I had gathered four decent logs, my body was screaming for rest.
But I wasn't done.
I still needed to carve joints into the logs—otherwise, they wouldn't hold together.
I dropped onto my knees, gripping my knife again. My hands shook as I pressed the blade against the wood, carving notches and grooves where the logs would interlock.
The first one came out in a weird shape.
The second was too shallow and needed to be modified.
The third split the wood slightly.
I growled under my breath.
This is harder than I thought.
I took a deep breath, forcing my hands to steady.
I had to do this in a careful manner. If I rushed, the logs wouldn't fit together, and all this work would be pointless.
Carefully, I continued carving, adjusting the depth and angles of the cuts. Slowly, I began to see progress.
By the time the sun started to set, I had managed to shape four logs with proper joints.
It wasn't much.
But it was a start.
As I lay down on a branch again, I gradually fell asleep as the cold embraced me as every night.
My whole body ached as I woke up. Exhausted, I slowly made my way to a bunch of branches, or rather sticks I had broken off the trunks yesterday and picked one up. It was cold and robust.
I then threw it near my "hut" as I began gathering small stones nearby. They should be big enough to make an ax head.
After a few hours I had collected slightly over a dozen fitting stones, all dug out from the snow.
As I took a stone and placed it on a tree trunk, I started to hit its edges with another rock.
The stone broke into two. A grin slowly formed on my face.
The stone continued to get thinner until it began to resemble an ax head. Only a bit more refining was needed until it would be finished.
It broke in two...
All my work until noon was wasted in a single moment. I let out a sigh and heard my belly rumbling.
I decided to eat one of my rations. I did not have many left and the hare was still uncooked as I have not found a way to ignite even a spark until now.
All afternoon I worked on my project. Just as the sun was about to set I finally succeeded in creating a beautiful stone-ax.
An almost perfect one, if I may add.
I decided to rest for the night as hunting would not help me. I have not figured out how to use magic so how could I create fire on a snowy mountaintop to cook the meat from the hare.
With that thought my eyes began to close, as my mind slowly drifted away.